A Distant Sound of Cannon
by squelchything
Summary: Ten year old Elizabeth Swann demands to hear a pirate story, and wakens some unwelcome memories for Lieutenant James Norrington.


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His Majesty's ship Dauntless, running down before the trade wind to join the West Indian Squadron, was exactly as she should be at eight bells in the morning watch: her decks newly scrubbed, her sails expertly trimmed and a proper night's run on her log board. Her second lieutenant, James Norrington, gave a satisfied nod as, after handing over the watch to the master, he made his way from the deck to the wardroom. The wind was fresh and the sun bright and all was well with his ship.

Norrington's satisfaction was slightly tarnished when he reached the wardroom to see a small figure in a miniature long-waisted blue gown. In Norrington's opinion, passengers should remain in their cabins (cabins belonging to two of Dauntless's junior lieutenants, currently berthing, very uncomfortably, with the midshipmen) and not go foraging on their own account. Dauntless was a King's ship and not a passenger ferry, after all. But Miss Elizabeth Swann roamed over Dauntless at will, from taffrail to bowsprit. Three days ago Norrington had found her eight feet from the deck the weather mainshrouds along with a couple of young midshipmen. Norrington had been on the point of having them whipped for leading her into danger, but the child had insisted that it was entirely her fault. Norrington grinned inwardly at the memory.

"Good morning, Miss Swann," he said, sitting down beside Marlow, the first lieutenant. "You are awake and about promptly today."

Elizabeth Swann hitched herself on to the table, letting her legs and skirts swing with the regular motion of the ship.

"My father is not," she said. "I think he dined too well with the captain last night."

Marlow snorted with laughter, and flickered a blond eyebrow at Norrington. "Does he know where you are?" he asked, rapping his biscuit on the table.

"No," said Elizabeth composedly. Norrington wondered briefly how good a governor Swann would make, given that he could barely keep control of one ten-year-old woman-child.

"Can I help you to anything, Miss Swann?" Marlow asked gallantly.

"An egg, if you please, Lieutentant Marlow. I don't want weevily bread."

"When you've been at sea for six months at a stretch, Miss Swann, you would be glad of the weevils for the sake of their meat," put in Cameron, the third lieutenant.

"Truly?" she asked, dark eyes as round as pennies.

"Mr Cameron is prone to exaggeration," Norrington said drily. Cameron grinned unrepentantly, and Elizabeth shook her curly head at him reproachfully.

It was that candid friendliness, Norrington thought, that had made the child free of the ship. She extended the same camaraderie to everyone from the captain to the cabin boys, much to her father's despair. And it had effects; the captain had her to breakfast at his table and let her sit in his hammock chair in the stern gallery; the surgeon gave her sweetmeats from his private stock; Cameron had demonstrated to her how to lay and aim the nine-pounder bowchaser on the day the captain had ordered gunnery drills; the younger midshipmen cherished a precocious passion for her. Even Norrington, despite his views on passengers, was aware of a growing affection for the girl. To justify it he cited to himself her intelligence, the courage that was almost to the point of recklessness, the observant disposition that led Elizabeth to learn as much about rigging and seamanship in a month as most people would in a year. _Such a shame she wasn't born a boy_, Norrington thought. _I would trade her for half our mids in a heartbeat._

Marlow was giving a gloomy estimate of how many men they were likely to lose in the West Indies. "Poisonous spiders, yellow jack, smallpox..."

"Assuming, sir, we don't lose a boatload or two in a pirate skirmish before we even reach the station," mumbled Cameron behind his plate.

Little Elizabeth had been listening with attention. "Really truly pirates?" she asked suspiciously.

"On my word of honour," Cameron said. "The bloodthirsty scourge of the Caribbean."

Elizabeth squeaked; Norrington glanced up and said, "Mr Cameron, have you nothing better to do than frighten little girls?"

"Oh, I'm not frightened, I am fascinated!" Elizabeth exclaimed. "What would happen if Dauntless met a pirate?"

"They would run, rather than face as many guns as we have," said Norrington. "An undisciplined crew won't stand up to a broadside." He glanced at Elizabeth. "If we cleared away for action, our passengers–you and your father–would be sent down to the cable tier to be safe."

"Along with the rats," Cameron put in gruesomely.

"Ugh!" Elizabeth shuddered. Norrington noted that rats were evidently more to be dreaded than pirates.

"We could give you a swab or a piece of plank to beat them off," Cameron continues, seeming determined to scare Elizabeth after her earlier assertion.

"I would rather fight than be sent down in the dark among the rats," she declared. Norrington grinned; he felt similarly.

"Did you ever fight pirates, Lieutenant Norrington?"

"Several times, Miss Swann. Could I trouble you for the ham, Mr Marlow?"

"Tell me, if you please," Elizabeth said.

"I fear I should make but a poor job of it, Miss Swann."

"Do you not number storytelling among your skills as an aspiring young officer?" Marlow inquired blandly, handing over the ham. In another senior officer it might have been a snub, but Norrington had served with Marlow a long time, and he took the remark in the spirit it was meant.

"'Tis not one of the Navy's requisites for its young gentlemen, sir."

"Does that mean you will not tell me about the pirates?" asked Elizabeth.

"Miss Elizabeth must have blood and gunpowder, I see," remarked Marlow. "Humour the child, Norrington, do, before she has us all driven distracted."

"Aye aye, sir," said Norrington, a touch sardonically. He glanced at Elizabeth, now leaning against the table by his side.

"The first pirate I saw," he began, swallowing a morsel of ham, "was out in the East Indies, when I was a midshipman not so very much older than you are now, Miss Swann, sailing in a 32-gun frigate. The admiral on the station got to hear of various acts of piracy committed by, rumour went, a couple of crews, Spaniards, Lascars, a mixed lot like that. Those East Indiamen make rich prizes, and with two pirates working together in fast craft they must have been getting rather wealthy."

Marlow chuckled, and Norrington took a mouthful of coffee. "So we were given orders, along with the rest of the squadron, to hunt down these pirates and destroy them on sight. Sink 'em, burn 'em or take 'em as prizes, the admiral didn't care. Our crew, therefore, was keeping a weather eye open, especially the younger or more excitable members."

"Were you excitable, sir?" Elizabeth asked; the irrepressible Cameron murmured, "I wouldn't credit it."

"Enough so to take my glass up into the shrouds with me instead of skylarking, one afternoon watch. By the way, Miss Swann, I trust that your feet have remained firmly on the deck of late." Norrington fixed Elizabeth with a firm gaze which she returned frankly.

"Of course, Lieutenant."

"As it happened, I was looking in the wrong direction to see the pirates. The masthead lookout hailed the deck to report two sails to leeward on the starboard beam. We had them just where we wanted them; with a lee shore on one hand, us to windward, and, thought they did not know it, one of our frigates close to the coast to the north of them."

He made a diagram of the positions out of the cutlery. The other wardroom officers were paying almost as close attention as Elizabeth Swann, he noticed with some annoyance. Norrington disliked speaking of his own achievements, lest it seem he were boasting, but surely the tale of an adventure as a mere irresponsible midshipman would be exempt from this charge.

"As soon as we heard that hail, every eye on the ship was searching that horizon, even those on the deck, where they could not possibly see the strange sails yet."

Norrington took a swig of his cooling coffee, remembering suddenly the physical sensations of that moment, long ago and far off: the ratlines biting into feet and knees, the precious telescope–bought from a master's mate who was permanently in need of cash–bumping about his neck on a piece of lanyard, the white decks and vivid sea reeling far below, and on the horizon, those twin smudges that might be clouds, might be the topsails of a pair of hostile ships.

"The captain came up from his cabin on hearing the news, took one look and ordered hands about ship. Let's make us the saltcellar, and the nearer pirate the mustard. We had the wind on our quarter now, our best point of sailing. Within two hours we were in gunshot range of one of them. We had long since beaten to quarters, of course, and we had a pair of long nines as bowchasers, the same as Dauntless. Unfortunately they carried sternchasers of the same calibre. So we ran on, firing at each other. They shot away our jib-boom and part of the beakhead, holed the headsails and the foretopsail stu'nsail , but we hulled them a couple of times twixt wind and water, and the more she settled the slower she moved."

"What happened then?" Elizabeth asked.

"All on a sudden, we saw the pirate stop almost dead in the water, like a cart hitting a stone, and her masts went by the board. She'd run on to an uncharted reef, close into the shore."

"Ooh," said Elizabeth, and the other officers made appropriate noises.

"She slipped off the reef, sank by the head and went down with all hands," Norrington concluded. The wardroom expressed satisfaction.

"Didn't you save anyone?" Elizabeth asked.

"Of course not," said Marlow. "They were pirates. No quarter given, none expected. What happened to the other pirate vessel, Norrington?"

"She met the other frigate when she was running for her bolthole on the coast, and was carried by boarding."

"Were there many casualties, sir?" Cameron asked.

"We lost a midshipman and two hands. I can't remember how many there were on the other frigate, I am afraid."

"Were they your friends, Lieutenant Norrington?" Elizabeth Swann, of course. None of his fellow officers would have asked that question.

"Yes, Miss Swann, the midshipman was a close friend of mine," he said grimly, restoring the cutlery to its proper positions. For a moment he remembered Richard Arundel. And there had been others who had died at the hands of pirates.

If it had anything to do with James Norrington, the pirates of the Caribbean were in difficulties.


End file.
